Quotes
I change my mind about the problem of free will every time I think about it, and therefore cannot offer any view with even moderate confidence; but my present opinion is that nothing that might be a solution has yet been described. This is not a case where there are several possible candidate solutions and we don’t know which is correct. It is a case where nothing believable has (to my knowledge) been proposed by anyone in the extensive public discussion of the subject.
Thomas Nagel, The view from nowhere, Oxford, 1986, p. 112
Property rights are not sacrosanct. They must bend to the needs and interests of human beings.
Jeffrey Paul and Robert Nozick (eds.), Reading Nozick: essays on Anarchy, state, and Utopia, Totowa, N.J, 1981, p. 378
To make sense of interpersonal compensation it is not necessary to invoke the silly idea of a social entity, thus establishing an analogy with intrapersonal compensation. All one needs is the belief, shared by most people, that it is better for each of 10 people to receive a benefit than for one person to receive it, worse for 10 people to be harmed than for one person to be similarly harmed, better for one person to benefit greatly than for another to benefit slightly, and so forth.
Jeffrey Paul and Robert Nozick (eds.), Reading Nozick: essays on Anarchy, state, and Utopia, Totowa, N.J, 1981, p. 197
It was never contended or conceited by a sound, orthodox utilitarian, that the lover should kiss his mistress with an eye to the common weal.
John Austin, The province of jurisprudence determined, London, 1832
In the past twenty-five years, many philosophers have been persuaded by John Rawls that the root problem is that utilitarianism ignores “the separateness of persons.” So widespread is this contention, that it has become a virtual mantra.
William H. Shaw, Contemporary ethics: taking account of utilitarianism, Malden, Mass, 1999, pp. 124-125
Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow’d with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.
David Hume, A treatise of human nature, Oxford, 1978
A lot of nonsense is talked nowadays about the “meaning” of music. Music indeed has a meaning, though it is not one that can be expressed in words.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, The making of music, Westport, Conn, 1955, p. 3
[R]eason can master our genes.
Peter Singer, The expanding circle: Ethics and sociobiology, Oxford, 1981, p. 131
Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something which no other species has ever aspired to.
Richard Dawkins, The selfish gene, Oxford, 2009, p. 3
Far from justifying principles that are shown to be “natural”, a biological explanation is often a way of debunking the lofty status of what seemed a self-evident moral law. We must think again about the reasons for accepting those principles for which a biological explanation can be given.
Peter Singer, The expanding circle: Ethics and sociobiology, Oxford, 1981, p. 71
He who was ready to sacrifice his life […] would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.
Charles Darwin, The descent of man, Amherst, N.Y, 1871
Of a few years later we have these illuminating glimpses from Gabriel Pierné: [Debussy] was a gourmet, but not a gourmand. He loved good things to eat and the quantity mattered little. I remember very well how he used to delight in a cup of chocolate which my mother invited him to take at the Café Prévost, and how, at Bourbonneux’s [a famous pâtisserie], he used to choose some delicate little pastry from a case specially reserved for the produits de luxe, while his friends were more likely to be content with something more substantial. This poor boy, who had come from a most ordinary class of society, had in everything the taste of an aristocrat. He was particularly attracted to minute objects and delicate and sensitive things. My father had a beautifully bound set of Le Monde illustré. When Achille came to the house we used to look at the pictures with delight. He preferred those which took up little space and were surrounded by a huge margin.
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy, London, 1936, p. 6
I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them.
Alan D. Sokal, Jean Bricmont, and Alan D. Sokal, Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science, New York, 1998, p. 269
Moderation! Moderation! […] What is moderation of principle, but a compromise between right and wrong; and attempt to find out some path of expediency, without going to the first principles of justice. Such attempts must always be delusive to the individual and fatal to mankind. If there is anything sacred, it is principle! Let every man investigate seriously and solemnly the truth and propriety of the principles he adopts, but having adopted, let him pursue them into practice: let him tread on the path which they dictate.
John Thelwall, The Tribune, 1795
J[ohn ]W[atkins]: “Karl, you are dishonest. You hate criticism.”
K[arl ]R[aimund ]P[opper]: “You are dishonest. Your statement refers to my state of mind; it is irrefutable. Only dishonest people raise irrefutable criticism.”
Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, and Matteo Motterlini, For and against method: including Lakatos's lectures on scientific method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend correspondence, Chicago, 1999, p. 189
He that, in the ordinary affairs of life, would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration, would be sure of nothing in this world, but of perishing quickly.
John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding, Oxford, 1975, p. 11
Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies.
Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, London, 1950
[T]he active rights of man are all of them superseded and rendered null by the superior claims of justice.
William Godwin and Isaac Kramnick, Enquiry concerning political justice, and its influence on modern morals and happiness, Harmondsworth ; Baltimore, 1793, p. 5
We have to stop allowing economics to be used as a trump card. Capitalism is like math. It is amoral. It is good at producing wealth; it’s bad at distributing wealth. Unless it operates within a moral framework it will produce an unjust society.
Charley Reese, Is Economics All There Is?, 2003
If politics is to become scientific, and if the event is not to be constantly surprising, it is imperative that our political thinking should penetrate more deeply into the springs of human action. What is the influence of hunger upon slogans? How does their effectiveness fluctuate with the number of calories in your diet? If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?
Bertrand Russell, Nobel Lecture, 1950